Social media is abuzz with the question of how long a sermon should be.\u00a0\u00a0Some say 45 minutes to an hour, reasoning that one can sit that long or longer at a concert, in a theater, or at a sports event, so why not for a sermon.\u00a0\u00a0Others argue that we are a TV generation, thus we are trained to focus for thirty minutes at a time, and that after all, the mind can absorb no more than the seat can endure.\u00a0\u00a0I remember a day in Preaching class when a student asked our professor how long a sermon should be and the answer was, \u201cUntil you are through,\u201d and then he added, \u201cand not any longer.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Good advice.\u00a0\u00a0I was raised on 28 to30 minute sermons and was taught the same during my preaching classes.\u00a0\u00a0One church rejected me as their Interim Pastor because I was too traditional, meaning, my sermons were too short.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019ve always thought it was best to leave folks wanting more than to exhaust the subject. Another church with multiple services and likewise, multiple Bible Study classes, asked me to preach longer since my thirty-minute sermons were allowing folks in the early services to get out too early, thus rushing the folks in the Bible Study classes to finish too soon.\u00a0\u00a0One staff member encouraged me to \u201cjust add another dog story to each sermon.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The Apostle Paul told Timothy to \u201cPreach\u00a0the\u00a0word! Be ready in season\u00a0and\u00a0out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching\u201d (2 Timothy 4:2). I guess it takes some preachers longer than others to do that – just so it\u2019s not the audience that is \u201clongsuffering.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Social media is abuzz with the question of how long a sermon should be.\u00a0\u00a0Some say 45 minutes to an hour, reasoning that one can sit that long or longer at a concert, in a theater, or at a sports event, so why not for a sermon.\u00a0\u00a0Others argue that we are a TV generation, thus we…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3183,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3182\/revisions\/3183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}